The Movie Theater |
| I worked at a movie theater complex for a summer while I was in college. The complex consisted of four theaters housed in three separate buildings (megaplexes didn't exist yet; our four-in-one cluster was considered very avant guarde). I worked in the second-largest theater, theater I, at the back of the parking lot. The staff was mainly college and high school students managed by a fortyish man who worked irregular hours, like the rest of us. No one mentioned when I was hired that there was some accountable activity going on in the theater, and it wasn't until I had been there long enough to sit in on one of the after-hours parties in the lobby (when the manager wasn't around) that I found out I wasn't the only one to experience it. |
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The Concession Stand |
| My first encounter with the unusual goings on there happened behind the concession stand. The space behind the counter was very narrow and employees routinely bumped into one another in the hectic pace that reigned just before the film started. Whenever I felt someone bump into or move past me, I'd automatically look around and say, "Sorry!" but it happened more than once when there was no one working the concession stand but me. The first couple of times I dismissed it, but it happened with such consistency that it became impossible to ignore. I remember being really freaked out by it. This was physical contact and I had no way of explaining it! I was never hurt or anything, and it didn't seem deliberately malicious. It just felt exactly like it did when someone else was working back there with me, except there was no one else there. But I was still new, and I didn't say anything about it. |
On the other side of the wall behind the concession stand was our stock room. This was a
favorite hangout of the employees because damaged food items were kept there along with the
sellable goods, and something got "damaged" - usually a box of chocolate covered almonds if
it happened on my shift -- at least once a day.  There were a lot of cleaning supplies there,
too, and a sink. More than once I walked into the stock room to find that faucet running full
blast, on its own. Things got knocked down and moved around without anyone being in the
closet; it was a constant mess. When it was quiet you could hear it happening. Once another
employee remarked, "There's our ghost!" but I didn't think anything of it, I thought he was
just joking. I instinctively straighten things anyway, but even I gave up on the stockroom
after a while. The manager was a pretty easygoing kind of guy, but he still liked his theater
to look nice. I thought it was odd that he never said anything about the mess in there.
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| I thought it was odd, too, how he didn't say anything when occasionally we'd come in for the opening shift in the morning and the concession stand would be a total mess. It was the job of the closing shift to straighten up, count, and lock up all the stock and drink cups. All the cabinets behind the counter were padlocked shut, but I came in more than once when the locks were open or off and laying on the floor, doors and cabinets were open, and the stock was disheveled. I would complain loudly about the deficiencies of the closing staff an set to work straightening it, but the manager would say nothing. There was never anything missing, just messed up. I didn't complain so loudly when, after working the closing shift and locking up the concession stand myself, I would come back the next morning -- to find everything a mess, again. |
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The Cold Spot |
| On the second floor of the theater were the projector room, the employee locker room, and the popcorn room. The popcorn room was the first room at the top of the stairs that led up from the lobby. It was a tiny room that housed an enormous popcorn popping machine. During the day, we popped and bagged corn for all four theaters for the evening shows when our small concession stand poppers couldn't keep up with demand. There was just enough space in that tiny room for the machine and one employee. It had no ventilation, and when you popped corn the room became astoundingly hot; you were drenched in sweat in a matter of minutes. In fact, that was the only time you could come to work in street clothes: if you were unfortunate enough to pull popcorn duty. (There was one guy who didn't mind doing it, and that usually released the rest of us from the obligation, thankfully). |
Next to the popcorn room was the projector room, which you had to go through to get to
the employee locker room. The projector room itself was so creepy that no one used the
employee locker room; it only stored uniforms not being worn by current employees.
 The
projector room was always dark, the only possible sources of light being the shadowy locker
room light (which was never on because no one ever went in there), the dusty light from the
theater that came in through the tiny projection window in the wall, and of course the projector
itself, when it was on. Several years' worth of accumulated one-sheets and
stand-alones (posters and floor displays) were stored in there, and in the darkness they
formed weird, misshapen outlines and shadows along the walls. The equipment was fully
automated and switched on and off by itself, and would scare you half to death if did either
when you happened to be in there. Like I said, no one used the locker room.
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| It was rare that the projector would malfunction, but every few months there'd be a glitch and we'd have to call someone to come and fix it. If it happened during a show, there'd be increased effort on our part to figure out the glitch our ourselves while we waited for the projector guy, since we'd have to deal with a theater full of angry patrons if it wasn't fixed quickly. That was about the only thing that could get any of us to spend extended time in the projector room. |
| The projector went down one afternoon on my shift. I was working concession, which meant I'd be the primary target for people walking out of the theater. To avoid that fate, I followed the assistant manager up the stairs to the projector room on the pretense of helping to fix it. I knew diddley about projectors; the closest thing to mechanical equipment that I knew anything about was horse tack. I was about as useful as a horse in fixing the thing, too, so I just excused myself from the busily-working assistant manager and walked some feet away to lean against the wall shared by the projector and popcorn rooms. |
| After leaning there a few moments, I became slowly aware of the sensation of someone pouring ice water back down my back. Startled, I jumped away from the wall, feeling the back of my uniform for the wetness that would surely be there, but not finding anything but the cold fabric of my uniform vest. I looked at the wall, puzzled. There wasn't anything there, just a blank wall with some rolled-up posters laying on the floor beside it. I tentatively put a hand out to the wall - and it was ICEY. I mean so cold that it almost felt like it was burning -- that kind of cold. It had to be that cold for me to feel it through my shirt and thick polyester vest. I was amazed, and fascinated. I called over the assistant manager, who was getting nowhere with the projector, and asked her to come and feel the wall. She did so, looking first annoyed, then surprised. A broken pipe, maybe? We felt around the rest of the wall and it was hot like an oven, the popcorn popper in the next room having been going full-blast for over an hour. When we went back to the find the cold spot, it had moved. Now it was below and considerably to the left of the place where I had been leaning against the wall. We couldn't come up for an explanation for that at all. |
I made no connection between this and the strange occurrences that went on downstairs,
and was suddenly all scientist. I went back downstairs to get a piece of chalk from the
employee message board inside the office -- walking very quickly to avoid the theater patrons
who were just beginning to emerge from the theater where there still no movie -- while the
assistant manager went back to work on the projector.  I bounded back up the stairs with
the chalk and felt around for the cold spot, which had moved again. It had risen and now was
at its original height but nearly at the other end of the wall from where I had first felt it.
Using my fingertips to discern the edges of the spot, I carefully drew an outline. When I was
finished, I took a step back to look at what I'd drawn. My jaw fell open.
I let the chalk drop to the floor. The outline was that of a human bust. It was the distinct
head and shoulders of... well, someone. It looked male, but I couldn't be certain. I muttered
something unintelligible which caused the assistant manager to look up. She gaped and said,
"Whoa..." but that was all I heard -- I high-tailed it out of there and back down the stairs.
Angry patron mob or no, I wasn't spending another second in that projector room. I didn't
sleep well for a full week after that.
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| The Assistant Manager's Story |
| After I'd been working there for a couple of weeks, I was invited to stay after the theater closed and hang out with the other employees. We were sitting in a circle on the carpet in the center of the lobby, talking. A lot of underage beer-drinking was involved, as I recall -- not by me, of course. : ) I hate beer and was much more interested in finding out about what was going on in the theater, anyway. I had a few ideas of my own but wanted to find out what the other employees knew. I waited until there was a lull in the conversation, then tentatively asked my question. It got a lot of head-nodding by way of response; everyone there had had experiences like the ones I described, although no one knew about the cold spot outline yet because neither the assistant manager nor I had told anyone about it. So I related the story exactly as it had happened, and it elicited the same type of response that the assistant manager gave when she first saw the outline I'd drawn. We fell silent for a minute, the others absorbing the information, myself and the assistant manager quietly mulling over our experience. Finally, someone - I think it was the guy who didn't mind working in the popcorn room - piped up and asked the assistant manager if she'd tell her story again. Hers was the most amazing experience of all. Here it is: |
 One night the assistant manager was closing
with a past employee, Sheila, whom I'd never met
(and never even heard of until I heard this story). One of the things the closing shift does
is check for transients in the theater. This was a coastal city with
fair weather and a sizeable homeless population. It was common for homeless people to sneak
into the theaters through the exit doors as the last patrons are leaving after the final show,
with the intention of spending the night and maybe getting some food to munch on (you'd think
our theater would have had a reputation for ghosts by now!). We were supposed to check
the entire building including the second floor, although usually no one bothered (and
no one wanted to be up in that creepy place anyway). But now and then someone would feel
obligated and checked upstairs, too. There was a house phone in the projector room so that the
projector person could call down to the main office about projector problems, I guess. That
evening, the assistant manager got a phone call from Sheila, who told her she could see someone
still in the theater through the projection window. The assistant manager went to check it
out.
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When she opened the theater door, the assistant manager saw a woman standing at the
front of the theater by the curtain. The assistant manager called out to her saying that the
theater was closed and that she had to leave, but the woman didn't respond in any way. The
assistant manager began making her way down the aisle, repeating what she'd said and getting no
response. As the assistant manager approached the woman, she could see that she was dressed
in a high-necked, long-sleeved blouse and full length skirt.  Her hair was pulled back in a bun
at the nape of her neck. The thing that really struck her, though, was that she could see the
woman's skirt and some stray hair from the bun moving lazily around her, as if being blown in
a breeze -- but there was no breeze in the theater. As she got closer, she could see the
woman's mouth moving, as if she were speaking very rapidly, but the assistant manager couldn't
hear anything. The woman, she said, looked worried, and seemed to be addressing someone, or
several someones, on the other side of the theater to the assistant manager's right. The
assistant manager kept stopped in the aisle about three rows back from the curtain and
shouted at the woman that the theater was closed. Suddenly, the woman, who seemed to have
ignored the assistant manager up to this point, looked dead at her. The woman looked angry,
then grew pale.
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| Then she vanished. |
| The assistant manager ran forward (!) thinking the woman had fainted or fallen or something, but there was no one there. She checked behind the curtain, underneath the seats -- everywhere. Nothing. She heard a choked cry from above, and looked up to see Sheila, ashen, watching from the projector room. She had seen everything from the projector room window. Sheila left the window and the assistant manager could hear her pounding feet coming down the stairs. The assistant manager ran back up the aisle to the lobby just in time to see poor Sheila burst through the stairwell door. With tears streaming down her face, she said she was never coming back to the theater, went straight to the lobby doors, and let herself out. She never did come back, neither to return her uniform nor to pick up her last paycheck. Someone went and retrieved her paycheck, still in the manager's desk drawer, as proof. |
�1997, Kelley Collins |
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